The Eleanor Hovda Collection

If like me, you have somehow managed largely to miss the music of Eleanor Hovda (1940-2009) you are in for a nice surprise. Innova has amassed a four-CD collection of her music, The Eleanor Hovda Collection (Innova 808), and it is a revelation.

Ms. Hovda has a sense of musical space that at times is a bit East Asian. Like some Chinese, Japanese and Korean traditional classical music, the sound and its wrapping in musically reverberant silence can be integral to the effect. Her attention to the dramatics of sound production also has some Asian qualities. For her, the impact of the music need not reside in the dual contrast quiet/loud, though that can be part of her dynamic. Intensity of sound color versus a more "grey" quiescence, musically italicized articulation version a more everyday "Roman" ordinariness of sound, a more vertical than a horizontal orientation to the sound events, in the sense that there are a series of inter-related occurrences more than a linear narrative, these are a few of the things that set her apart.

Whether it's a matter of a single conventional instrument, an ensemble, an electroacoustic or electronically generated sound source, or a combination of any of these elements, her singular attention to sound sculpturing and the nature of that attention mark her as very much in her own musical world. It's as if you take some of the sheer sensual sound extensions of Crumb's and Cage's piano works and make that a basis, a starting point to go somewhere very much your own. She seems to do that. She also does not in her music draw brackets around "electroacoustic" and "conventional" sound production. She approaches both from a kind of uniformly personal stylistic perspective. All become Hovda.

The four CDs of the set include so much music of interest that I don't think I can easily highlight the high points without over-encumbering this review with too many details. Suffice to say that there is some startlingly singular music generated throughout. It is one vast soundscape in some ways, each piece a part of a larger whole which encompasses all. And that whole reveals a composer we need to hear with concentration.

I believe that The Eleanor Hovda Collection is destined to join the ranks of the most important releases of this decade in the "New Music"/"Avant Classical" categories. It contains some remarkable music. It should go a long way in establishing Ms. Hovda as one of the more important sound artists/composers of our era.

MC Maguire, Nothing Left to Destroy

Mixology, MC style, has come of age as an avant art form. It's come quite a distance from the disco days when a dj could get a couple of recordings going in synch and augment one finished production with another, or with the same disc on a second turntable. Not to take away from those days and the subsequent early development. It could be cleverly done. But it wasn't art. Not then. Today you have DJ Spooky and other sophisticated mixologists who aspire and sometimes attain the status of composer, even "serious" composer.

MC Maguire, with the aid of his CPU (read computer) has most assuredly catapulted over the top of dance music to create two full length concertos on Nothing Left to Destroy (Innova 813). It's a melange of collage materials, acoustic, natural, electronic, noise, music as a kind of orchestra pitted against violinist Benjamin Bowman for "The Discofication of the Mongols" and against flautist Douglas Stewart for "S'Wonderful (That the Man I Love Watches Over Me)."

These are madcap juxtipositions of the aural kitchen sink avec soloist. The first piece starts with a "slower" quasi-modal tonal centered violin part and a soundscape that ever-transforms in virtuoso sound manipulation sequences. It gets more and more frenetic as it goes along, more and more there is the CPU orchestra as contrarian, even antagonist to the soloist. It's a fascinating listen.

The piece for flute and CPU bears some relation, now covert, now somewhat overt, to some old pop standards (hence the title). It is busy and turbulent, with the beauty of the flute part making itself known over the trashcan aesthetics of the CPU virtual orchestra.

The music may come out of a DJ stance, but its principal forbear I suppose you could say is John Cage and his live and tape manipulated collage pieces consisting of various prerecorded "found objects"--in his 1950's electronic mix pieces, and in the second phase, with live collaging beginning notably with "Variations IV." But I suppose you could also say John Cage (aided by his often-assistant David Tudor) was the first MC!

What counts in the end is the finished work--the two pieces presented for us on this disk. They are noisy, chaotic, anarchic but not formless. And in their own way they are beautiful.

Recommended for the Gyro Gearloose in everybody. Welcome to the future?

Beyond the Second Stage of Boredom: Arnold Dreyblatt's "Resonant Relations" and Regenerated Minimalism

If I am in any way a typical listener, and I am not entirely sure I am, my experience of and reaction to musical minimalism conforms to a pattern that may be somewhat widespread. There were several stages for me. First I was perplexed and bored that "nothing was happening in the music." Then I became tranced and entranced with the best of it, allowing it to take me where it will and not worrying too much about my initial expectation of conventional event structure. Then there arose works and composers that to my mind did not discern rightly between what might be interesting musical motifs and combinations, and those that just keep on clobbering you over and over with a kind of banality that enervates. Then there came new works and new composers who found ways to keep it interesting. The trance element may no longer be as active a factor in the new works, but there are other things going on to compensate the listener for the time spent.

Belonging to this last category is Arnold Dreyblatt and his recently recorded work Resonant Relations (Cantaloupe). The CD contains the longish title work and a shorter "Twentyfive Chords in Ninety-Four Variations." The music is well performaed by the chamber ensemble Crash.

The composer seems to be working on a modified tuning (is it untempered?) and that gives the ensemble some complex aural beating between tones that adds to the sound greatly. Beyond that this is music with a consistent pulse (the title work, that is). It does not have a readily apparent processual bent--like Reich's early music and Riley's "In C" do. In fact along with the development of recurring motifs there seems to be a pre-minimalist attention to event periodicity. Not in some set of movements, but rather in terms of episodes. One sort of thing goes on for a while; then something slightly contrasting goes on for a while, and so on. Since there is not much trance-like sound happening in this music, the episodic structure keeps it from getting boring, as does the fairly complex interplay of instruments, counterpoint if you will.

The second piece ditches the pulse and articulates (untempered?) chord clusters singly with spaces in between (a little Asian-like/Cage-Feldman-like in that) in ways where the instrumental combinations, manner of articulation, and tone color are continually changing. It's quite interesting to hear and contrasts quite nicely with the title piece.

So here we have a rejuvenated sort of minimalism, one that does not sound much like the earlier works. It's original, in other words. Its tonality is overtone-like; its event structure is periodic; its aural makeup is engaging (thanks in part to the exotic tuning); and it changes over time in ways that are not like the superorganicism of early Reich. It's more like a sophisticated topsy, to the unmediated ear anyway.

I recommend this one. It has much to it that bears hearing. Arnold Dreyblatt has something going on that I hope we can hear more of over time.